5 random things I learned today...

*If you take out a container of breadcrumbs to make meatballs, and think "I've had these for a long time", and if you look on the bottom and notice the expiration date is April '07, then you should NOT open the container and look in it. Don't do it. Trust me on this one.

*You can make violins and guitars out of legos.

Yes, that is a pair of tights on her head. Haven't you heard? It's the newest rage.

*Chiropractors are my friend.

*Homemade spaghetti and meatballs (minus the breadcrumbs) taste really good with hot cocoa, especially when it's a winter wonderland outside.

*Having a fire in the fireplace and a postcard-worthy picture out my window makes me a very unproductive homemaker, but a productive blogger.

Pretty Spicy

Goodbye ugly spices, hello pretty spices.

It was so simple, I can't believe I didn't do it sooner. My IKEA love friend, Charlene (who has no blog to hyperlink to...yet...) told me of a simple Target item (sorry, IKEA) that helped me organize those spices.

This seems like such a BASIC place to organize, like most people have already figured out how to organize their spices. I had them in little trays that I would slide out and look through... but my spice collection grew to overflowing, and that method didn't work anymore. Look at the ridiculous amount of spices here:

I did a little bit of purging, a little bit of consolidation (I had 3 garlic salts, 2 basils, 2 oreganos - disorganization is a money waster, too...), add an ingenous stairstep spice organizer, and voila!

Pretty Spices!

Pee your pants funny...

It's warm! It's warm! Oh wait. It WAS warm.

I don't even know how warm it was yesterday and today. Somewheres around 45 degrees. Warm enough to shed the jackets, and even shed the sweaters for a moment. There is but one word to describe such a condition:

Glorious.

Part of it is just breathing air that isn't either:

a)outside air that freezes the lining of your nostrils, or

b)recycled inside air that you have been exhaling and then breathing in for approximately 3 months.

Part of it is taking a walk and letting the kids splash in puddles and run around. Yes, running full speed on the melting ice, which happens to include slipping and doing full-blown belly flops or butt-plops on the ice... multiple times. (That's what we call deep sensory input, baby. It's all good)

It's all-around a God-ordained, beautiful, needed, right-about-when-I-thought-I-would-die-from-the-cold, breath of fresh air.

But.

This afternoon, Ava sang on the way to the car, "It's SPRIIIING!!!"

It's February 1. Tomorrow it's cold again. Not Spring.

Not. Spring.

And herein lies the Minnesota conundrum. We love days like this, but it makes us want things that are, um... like...

4 months away.